• Final Score: Colorado State 10, Florida 48
• Line: Colorado State +21.5
• Venue: The Swamp

The McElwain Bowl!

As part of the deal to bring Coach McElwain to Gainesville, Florida agreed to play CSU in 2019 for $2 million. That was the largest amount ever paid for a single “buy game” according to ESPN. (Not sure if still true.)

I remember when the deal was struck in 2014, some wiseguy on Ramnation commented that McElwain wouldn’t even be at Florida to coach the 2019 game. What a call by that guy! (I tried to find the actual post, but gave up after about 5 minutes. That’s the type of effort you can expect from a free blog with 100 views a day!) It seemed absurd at the time, but the McElwain Era at Florida fell apart quick.

As we’re all aware, McElwain’s time at Florida was just… odd. He won quite a few games, but his tendency to say a lot of words without actually saying anything kind of rubbed everyone in Gainesville the wrong way. He got a free pass for that in Fort Collins where the media scrutiny is Charmin soft, but they weren’t going for it in SEC territory. Later he’d make love to a shark and then he’d claim he was getting death threats and then he was gone.

In case anyone was wondering, McElwain’s million dollar house on 863 Riparian Way eventually sold, and it looks like it has changed hands a couple times since then:

I wonder if it still has that sweet custom CSU outdoor kitchen.

Anyway, instead of facing off against Coach Mac, we got to play against some guy named Dan Mullen. I don’t watch too much football outside of the Mountain West so I’m not going to pretend to know who Dan Mullen is.

When I think of this game, the first memory off the top of my head is that Ryan Stonehouse was absolutely bombing his punts. He was averaging 53 yards a punt. Unfortunately, if your first memory is of the punter, things probably didn’t go well.

Outside of a couple Stonehouse bombs, the kicking game was an absolute disaster. You know I hate nothing more than boners in the kicking game, and this game had an entire season’s worth of boners in the kicking game.

Ladies and gentlemen, Boner Jam ’18:

(Who kicks a 41-yard field goal on 4th and 1, on the road, against an SEC team?)

(Florida scored, but I couldn’t get close to fitting the entire play into a 10-second GIF.)

So that’s basically your game right there. 17 points directly from kicking game boners and 6 points worth of missed field goals. I can’t remember, was this the year we actually had a Special Teams coach or no? What a friggin joke.

This was the rare game where you give up 48 points and the defense actually wasn’t that bad.

I have nothing else to say about this one. We’re at the point of the countdown where it’s just us getting our butts kicked by 10-win team. Not all that interesting. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel though, the wins are coming.

Here’s a condensed version of the game: